The hardest journey

The hardest journey of my life: From Australia to Estonia with a broken foot

Laura Mallene writes how she evacuated herself back home from the south coast of Australia with her leg in a cast.

Last year I united two of my passions - Brazilian jiu-jitsu and travelling. I was competing in Melbourne, Australia, when I heard a crack coming from my foot. In the hospital, it turned out the fibula of my left foot is broken so badly it needs a surgery.

Even if I could pay the big hospital bill, the harsh truth is I can’t take care of myself after the surgery. I need to go home. Australian doctors say the journey is doable and the Estonian doctor says he can do the surgery the same week. I stare sadly at my cast and look out the window of the hospital. I can see the skyscrapers of Melbourne and its lights. It’s a view worth a million dollars. Can I ever walk on those streets again and meet these amazingly friendly people who I learned to love so fast?

“Shit,” I whisper in Estonian and try not to cry. I have to say goodbye to everyone and everything. Packing takes until the early hours of morning. 

All this is exactly like another fight: tough, brutally hard, and painful.

It’s dangerous to fly with a broken foot because of an increased risk of thrombosis. Which is why the day before the departure I sit at the doctor's office where the nurse is teaching me how to inject myself.

“You just have to grab the skin from ten centimeters from your belly button and then… stick it in,” she explains, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

“Just… stick it in,” I repeat helplessly and try to convince myself injecting myself in different airports is a completely normal and doable thing.

Maybe it is but the journey will be challenging - at least judging by the degree of painkillers. Australian doctors prescribe me oxycodone - a prescription medication that is often given to cancer patients who are in severe pain. Everything is broken: my adventure and I myself, too.

First airport: Melbourne

“You have a medical certificate to confirm you are allowed to fly…right?”

The employee of Virgin Australia exudes efficiency. Usually I like people like her, but I don’t have the certificate she asks for. I didn’t even realise I need one. But the Efficient Employee takes out a folder,flips it quickly until she finds the right page and points her finger triumphantly to the page which strictly informs that passengers with broken bones are allowed to fly only with the medical certificate. 

“We have a doctor in the airport,” she informs me. “Maybe you can get one from him.”

This is my only choice - to roll towards the tiny doctor’s office of the Melbourne International Airport. It’s closed. Ten minutes after the official opening hour a secretary arrives. She says the doctor is on his way. Half an hour later the Indian doctor finally arrives. He shakes his head - and I feel it is a dance scene from an old Indian movie - and looks at me over his glasses.

“Is there a gap in your cast?”

“Yes. Big one. There is no problem if it swells up,” I reply, trying to hide all of my desperation.

I give him all the paper work from different doctors, tell him how the Australian doctors allowed me to fly, show my syringes and painkillers, but his face is showing a decent amount of skepticism.

15 minutes later and 100 dollars poorer (the cost of this service), I roll towards the Virgin Australia employee. “Everything all right, no?” she asks and I give her my best tortured/radiant facial expression. I can finally go on the plane.

I have one more thing to do. In a toilet for the disabled people I’ll do my first injection. I clean the skin ten centimeters from the navel and stick it in the stomach. The feeling which follows is damn disgusting: everything inside me is spinning around.

I breathe in and out and finally I am able to roll out of the toilet.

On the plane I stretch myself comfortably out: the crew gave me three seats. I take out my book, which my coach Livia gave me (the biography of one of the world's best MMA fighter, Ronda Rousey's), and swallow the weakest painkiller I have.

First stop: Bali

Bali airport staff asks me to pay 50 Australian dollars for a visa. I do that and a small man rolls me in a wheelchair next to the cafe and benches. I should wait for 12 hours on this Indonesian tourist island. It’s a long wait, especially if I am not able to go to the toilet or eat - the suitcase is too heavy for me to move around.

I don’t need to do that - because I am lucky to have good people in my life. Besides the editor of this paper’s travel section, Krister Kivi, who kindly found me really cheap first class plane tickets (no, Krister, you are not allowed to leave this part out of the article), there is Jess Fraser, a leader of organisation called Australian Girls in Gi, who I met half a year ago in Western Australia and who is training in Bali at that moment.

I grab a bag of almonds from my backpack and drop a huge amount to the floor (an old, slightly weary-looking Indonesian man sweeps them up). Then I can see Jess whose tanned face radiates optimism.

“We are going to the beach,” she says and doesn’t let herself be put off of by my facial expressions, which, I believe, mostly show bewilderment.

“I can’t walk,” I tell her but that doesn’t stop Jess. She grabs my suitcase and takes me to the ground floor. Then she bargains for a while with taxi drivers until she is happy with the price. I’m taking another oxycodone pill and sit in the back seat.

“Did you have a motorcycle accident?” the taxi driver asks.

“No. I am a fighter.”

“We are going to Ku De Ta. We will drink cocktails, then we will get a massage and then eat gelato,” she decides and I won’t argue (although painkiller/cocktail combo probably would not make my doctor happy). 

We undertake everything she said, including the massage. An Indonesian guy massages me from head to toe (healthy leg’s toe, that is) and repeats “I am veeeery soooory” every time I make a sound.

“Did you drive with a motorcycle?” a hostess of the massage room asks when I am leaving this place with a satisfied smile.

“Nope. I fought.“

It turns out a white tourist with motorcycle injuries is very common in Bali. For I have to repeat the same thing to two waitresses and three taxi drivers. 

Later, I become convinced that there is nothing more breath-taking, beautiful, and extraordinary than sunset in Bali. I watch how light pink ball of the sun falls into the sea while the DJ of Ku De Ta plays a mystical track. I cannot stop smiling.

Back in the airport, another Indonesian guy rolls me to the first class lounge (I haven’t been in one of those ever before) and the waitress brings me mini-sandwiches.

Suddenly a black nun appears in front of me.

“Can I help you with anything?” she asks kindly.

“Yes, I would like to have some water, please,” I say.

The nun brings me water.

“What happened to your leg?” she asks curiously.

For the first time, I don’t really want to answer. How can I tell her I like to fight?

„Uhmm… I am a fighter,“ I answer shyly.

„I see,“ she says convulsively, and goes back to her chair.

It’s really cool to travel in first class of China Eastern. I look, eyes wide open, how flight attendants  give me a cosmetic bag and place pillows under my foot and cover me with a blanket. In this part of the plane they don’t serve me an aluminum box of wet rice and chicken, for sure.

My foot doesn’t really like my Bali trip. The pain is so awful I have to take two pills of oxycodone.

I fall asleep after that. I am back in Australia in my dreams.

Second stop: Shanghai

In Shanghai, a guy with a wheelchair is waiting for me (as in every other airport during this journey). He takes me to the waiting area. I lie on the benches and put my foot on my bag. And wait.

Wait without wifi - Shanghai airport wants me to send them some kind of  an sms first, but my Australian phone credit is empty…

It’s time for another injection. I can’t go to the toilet and have to do it right here. So I take everything I need for that from my bag and around helplessly, hoping nobody won‘‘t see what I am about to do. Then I take out the syringe and - feeling like a novice junkie who is preparing herself to get high for first time of her life- clean the skin of the abdomen and inject myself. Luckily, I don’t need to wait for long in Shanghai. Only a few hours.

I feel bad for the girl in a dark pink outfit who has to roll me on the plane. Me and my backpack are heavy and this is surely difficult for her.

But even more I feel sorry for the stewardess of the next flight. It’s a challenge to go to the bathroom with crutches. At one point I fall – the stewardess catches me but I am way too big for her tiny frame. She falls, too, to the empty seat. My face turns red and I go back to my seat.

Third stop. Moscow

We don’t land right next to the airport, but quite far away. All the passengers walk down the stairs and flight attendants point towards the stairs with beaming smiles.

“No. I can’t climb down the stairs.”

The smiles of the stewardesses faded at least a few degrees. After few moments, they let me know a bridge is coming to the plane. It arrives soon enough with a wheelchair on it and the airport people take me to the bus where Russian ladies look at me with pity in their eyes.

Blond, fluffy-haired Alla Pugacheva look-a-like member of the Moscow airport staff tilts her head to the right, then to the left. She doesn’t ask any questions. She only says: ”Do not worry about the luggage.”

The Moscow Airport treats my really nicely. I have to wait only a few hours, so I watch out of the huge window. I watch planes that take off or arrive, until two huge Russian men come with a wheelchair and take me on next plane. They don’t speak any English but according to the parts I understand - my Russian is quite rusty - it’s really amusing to watch me.

It is also the first airport where I don’t have to use crutches, not even once.

Destination. Tallinn

There’s something incredibly cozy in the Tallinn airport. Even the fact the bridge they usually use when a passenger is in a wheelchair is broken makes me feel like I’m at home - in a very strange way. Two very big Estonian guys lift me up and carry me down the stairs.

“Isn’t it too heavy…?” I ask carefully.

“No. We are strong guys…” they say. “And we go to the gym very often.”

My blue suitcase made it to Tallinn. Alla Pugacheva of the Moscow airport kept her promise. My parents and my friends are greeting me at the gate. It’s really cold outside…

Three hours later we arrive to the hospital. “We brought you a patient to repair,” my Dad says to the hospital staff.

Australia is still with me - in very big pain episodes I tend to speak with the nurses of the Traumatology department exclusively in English.

The leg has healed quite rapidly - thanks to Reedik Pääsuke, MD, and the rest of the hospital staff (a big „Thank you!“). And what an adventure it has been - full of pain, cocktails, and painkillers.

I really don’t think there are a lot of things I am unable to do.